Swimming pool maintenance requires frequent cleaning of debris wich ordinarily rests on the bottom of the pool. To this end pool owners and maintenance personnel will occasionally vacuum the pool using a long corrugated plastic hose (about 30-50' in length) which is carried to the pool and attached to the powered poolside skimmer vacuum inlet to draw water and debris through the hose whereby it may be removed from the pool by the pool filter or traps. Vacuum hoses are typically quite light in weight for easy portability but this has the disadvantage that the hose is filled with air such that a substantial length of the hose floats when it is first deployed in a pool to be cleaned.
In order that the skimmer pump will draw water through the hose it is necessary to first fill the hose with water at least to the extent that most if not all of the air is removed. Failure to do so places an undue load on the skimmer pump while it is merely drawing air from the hose if in fact the pump is able to remove the air from the hose at all.
Pool maintenance personnel typically resort to the difficult and unhealthful process of manually sucking air with their mouths from the free end of the hose after deployment of the hose into the pool with the result that dirty water may drawn into their mouths prior to connecting the free end of the hose to the poolside skimmer inlet.
The prior art is replete with hand-held pumping devices or siphon starters, some of which must be oriented in a particular attitude in order to perform their intended function. One example is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,574,828 issued Mar. 11, 1976 to Brumfield in which a pair of concentric tubes are manually reciprocated to operate a pump/siphoning device which must be generally horizontally oriented to siphon liquids.
Other United States patents located in applicant's search include U.S. Pat. No 108,087 issued Oct. 11, 1870 to Averell, et al, and U.S. Pat. No. 1,336,310 issued Apr. 6, 1920 to Marhenke.
It is the primary object of the present invention to provide a lightweight and inexpensive hand held pump and skimmer adaptor unit which is realiably operable regardless of the attitude of the unit and which effectively prevents flow of water through the unit unless the pump is operated and which may be rapidly affixed to the inlet of the powered pool pump thereby effectively eliminating the need for maintenance personnel to suck water into their mouths while filling the vacuum hose prior to connection thereof to the skimmer inlet.